Rogue Clones

Is it just me or is CCP made the wrong decision putting Nova on PC. Maybe they should just put Dust 514 on Ps4....Just sayin

No it's not just you. Many of us have said exactly the same thing. It's pointless, though, CCP have long since pulled the plug on Dust and seem hell bent on PC for whatever comes of NOVA. Actually, as far as I can see, a new product, developed and based on PC and ported to other platforms as necessary is probably a better strategy. But until they actually produce something, ANYTHING, it's all just vapourwear to me.

AmarrFTW

"The Hero got his feelings hurt for 9 hp... "

Not For Sale- Sanders 2016

Ancient Exiles.

I think the best option would have been cross-platform on XB1 and PS4. Could have tapped into a huge player base separate from EVE and actually expanded the player base in New Eden.

On PC the bulk of Nova players are likely going to just be EVE alt's, meaning CCP's universe will continue to stagnate. There are just too many F2P and cheap shooters on Steam already, way tougher to compete.

Nos Nothi

Second, developing the game on PC gives them more freedom than developing for the PS4. CCP doesn't need to go through Sony for anything. They could not have pulled off the demo they did as quickly and easily had it been developed on the PS4. They also couldn't use test servers for Dust when coming up with changes, and look how that turned out. Development on the PC allows for test servers to try out changes beforehand, and working out kinks before releases and patches hit the player base.

I do hope that Nova eventually releases for a console, but I think that the best way for that to happen and give the best chances for long term success is to first develop on the PC.

Second, developing the game on PC gives them more freedom than developing for the PS4. CCP doesn't need to go through Sony for anything. They could not have pulled off the demo they did as quickly and easily had it been developed on the PS4. They also couldn't use test servers for Dust when coming up with changes, and look how that turned out. Development on the PC allows for test servers to try out changes beforehand, and working out kinks before releases and patches hit the player base.

I do hope that Nova eventually releases for a console, but I think that the best way for that to happen and give the best chances for long term success is to first develop on the PC.

Kirkinen Risk Control

Caldari State

I'd agree that dealing with Sony was (or at least seemed to be) a pain in the butt for CCP, although plenty of other companies get it done. But whatever, benefit of doubt and so forth.

I'd also agree that obviously PC gives you way more power to work with, creating the possibility of a better game all around.

That being said, while I don't think Nova would be better off (overall) on consoles, CCP has started down the same road they did with Dust. The target audience is (at least for now) EVE. OK ok, and the 24 people left on these forums.

Obviously a lot could change over time, but at the moment I highly doubt anyone outside of these forums knows or cares about Nova. OK ok, maybe 24 people on the EVE forums.

EVE has already said no to an FPS. They tried it and didn't like it. And Dust was suppose to have a meaningful impact on Tranquility. Hell, the dream was Dust would have a MAJOR impact on Tranquility, and EVE was still not interested.

Not to say that's a bad thing, but EVE and an FPS are (obviously) 2 vastly different games, whether said FPS is near pure PvP, or mainly PvE. I just don't see CCP gaining a large/solid player base through EVE.

The next logical group would be Dust, but with the move to PC they are leaving most of the possible player base behind. I know why they want to do it, I'm not saying they're doing it to be d*cks, but they are throwing away quite a bit of advertising/recruiting work with the move to PC.

So now they are in a position where their primary base of company loyal players has already shown total disinterest in an FPS, and their secondary base of company loyal players have been severely thinned by awful PR events, on top of an inability for most to take part in Nova even if they wanted to.

That means that CCP will need to somehow harvest a community from outside of Tranquility. And with the (pretty much) one and only hook of a CCP FPS gone (EVE connectivity), I wonder just how they plan to do this. If our numbers were always too low in Dust, how do they plan on keeping Nova healthy? "We are getting the basics down" is a horrible pitch for any game, and both PC and console markets are forever flooded with competition.

On the control front, having the options of a KB/M setup is, of course, better. Though a controller feels more comfortable to me personally, the options/flexibility alone that a KB/M provides make it a better control method.

A moot point of course, as you can use a KB/M with the PS (3 for sure, I'd imagine 4 is the same). Yeah, they tried it with Dust, but not the right way.

And on the port front, it seems to me that with the move to PC for the added power and space to work with, the resulting game would be very difficult to port to PS4, especially if Nova gets past the initial bare bones phase and starts adding content.

TL:DR- I don't feel the question is "should Nova have been a console game instead of a PC game?", the question should be "does CCP know what kind of game it's making, and who they are making it for?" Which unfortunately seemed to be the same question throughout the life of Dust.

My personal belief is whatever happens in Nova or EVE, CCP needs to start working on an EVE 2. I know, I know. Nobody ever likes to hear that, but too bad, I said it. EVE is old as sh*t, and it wouldn't be hard for someone dedicated to come along and replace it with a new model. It might as well be CCP.

Put it on PC, thats fine. And I don't care about the details, progress/char transfer, whatever. That doesn't matter. What matters is CCP is sitting on a gold mine simply with an EVE 2 alone. If they develop an EVE 2 and a Dust 2 in tandem I think they could actually give us the dream that was suppose to be EVE/Dust. And they would actually be in sync with their target player base for once.

In the short term I do hope Nova isn't a complete bust. I won't be participating, I'm currently focused on the grind towards home ownership, but hopefully CCP gets some solid FPS experience under their belt, maybe a bit of confidence, and if they don't dissappear after this sale deal concludes there will be a brand new universe waiting for me/us in the next 5 years or so.

Consoles and PCs tend to have different player bases. The FPS genre is more popular on consoles, for example.However, PC games usually have a much more dedicated player-base, while console players usually just chase fads.On PCs, you see games that people are still playing years after launch, while on consoles, a game's servers become a ghost town a year or 2 after launch.

Consoles are good at creating a hype train and advertising, while PCs tend to keep a living community. Maybe, as some people have said, it would be a good idea to start developing on PC, then eventually port to consoles to draw a lot of attention to the game once it's in a more playable state.

On the control front, having the options of a KB/M setup is, of course, better. Though a controller feels more comfortable to me personally, the options/flexibility alone that a KB/M provides make it a better control method.

A moot point of course, as you can use a KB/M with the PS (3 for sure, I'd imagine 4 is the same). Yeah, they tried it with Dust, but not the right way.

And on the port front, it seems to me that with the move to PC for the added power and space to work with, the resulting game would be very difficult to port to PS4, especially if Nova gets past the initial bare bones phase and starts adding content.

TL:DR- I don't feel the question is "should Nova have been a console game instead of a PC game?", the question should be "does CCP know what kind of game it's making, and who they are making it for?" Which unfortunately seemed to be the same question throughout the life of Dust.

My personal belief is whatever happens in Nova or EVE, CCP needs to start working on an EVE 2. I know, I know. Nobody ever likes to hear that, but too bad, I said it. EVE is old as sh*t, and it wouldn't be hard for someone dedicated to come along and replace it with a new model. It might as well be CCP.

Put it on PC, thats fine. And I don't care about the details, progress/char transfer, whatever. That doesn't matter. What matters is CCP is sitting on a gold mine simply with an EVE 2 alone. If they develop an EVE 2 and a Dust 2 in tandem I think they could actually give us the dream that was suppose to be EVE/Dust. And they would actually be in sync with their target player base for once.

In the short term I do hope Nova isn't a complete bust. I won't be participating, I'm currently focused on the grind towards home ownership, but hopefully CCP gets some solid FPS experience under their belt, maybe a bit of confidence, and if they don't dissappear after this sale deal concludes there will be a brand new universe waiting for me/us in the next 5 years or so.

First of all, I don't believe having control options is the right way to go. All controls should be the same, to ensure an even playing field. Some people dominate with kbm while others struggle with it, and likewise for controllers. That said, putting NOVA on PC is automaticly going to make it a kbm game. Being one who prefers controller for all games which work with analog input, I would be looking for a controller option anyhow.

As for ports, CCP develops games on the PC with lowest common denominator performance in mind. EvE has options to scale down load on processor, memory or graphics to allow people to run it on a fairly low spec machine. Yes, it's point and click but the performance of the presentation can be improved markedly by scaling down one or more of these. The result is potentially a game that performs well but looks crap. The same sort of scaling can be applied for porting to consoles.

CCP would already have to develop NOVA to work on a lower spec machine, with options to allow it to perform acceptably on that platform. Porting to a console should be a no-brainer, as long as there is support for controllers.

EVE2 - We already have it. By its very nature, EvE is a continuously developing game. There have been quite a number of very major releases, which to my mind qualify as virtually a new product. The only thing that was the same between them was the general nature of the game.

A brand new EvE would presumably require a brand new database? Why? Databases can be and are rebuilt quite frequently, for instance when there's a very significant extended downtime, that's when the database is likely being rebuilt. What benefit is there in having an EVE2? It would only be some sort of PR thing because EvE is already virtually a different product from its early days. The engine has changed for a start. Would that not qualify as an EVE2?

EvE is NOT as "old as sh!T". The CONCEPT of EvE IS. What you seem to be saying is that you want a new concept, but the existing players of EvE NEVER want a new concept. They basicly want whatever they have at any given time to just stay that way. New features are, I think, designed to keep the game moving, to maybe attract new players (lose quite a few in the process) and generally keep EvE from becoming the "old as sh!t" game you claim it to be.

I think your gold mine of EvE2 and Dust2 could simply be achieved by the same upgrade process for EvE, but with inclusion of Nova into it. The only thing that would have to happen to make this work is potentially some upgrades to the database, if the capacity for the necessary switches and data isn't already there. Are you talking about some sort of interactions between the games, like was intended for Incarna? eg. walking in stations, EvE pilots carrying Dust mercs around the galaxy, that sort of thing? That would require new functionality in EvE that the EXISTING EvE community has already said it doesn't want. Any new EvE2 product would have to first and foremost satisfy the existing EvE community because that's how it is with EvE. You're not talking about a GAME, you're talking about a CULTURE. You can't change a culture by just rolling out a new version of a game.

I myself am mainly concerned with the concept of a sale. Why are they even contemplating selling? What aspects of CCP are they using as selling points. My gut feeling is that they aren't selling EvE, but rather they're trying to make the company look like a VR shop, to attract new buyers with glitzy toys. A new company that bought CCP for the toys and ignores EvE will be death not only to EvE but also potentially for CCP. Any entity that bought CCP without recognising they're buying the CULTURE of EvE, not just the game, will be a negative.

I'm neutral on the control option front, my fault for not making that clearer. I just don't think the stronger control option (depending on the system) should be gimped to bring it in line with the weaker control option, or vice versa. Seeing as how the game is on PC the KB/M will be the dominant control option. I prefer DS3s as well, but I don't think a game pad should be buffed and or KB/M nerfed in an attempt to create parity. This was a bit of an issue here already.

On the port front, I'm far from knowledgeable in game development and software and coding and all that. I would imagine the chance for Nova to grow into something larger than could be ported is there isn't it? I'm not against a port, but while there is no certainty they ever will port, I would think there is also no certainty they would be able to port if Nova ever came together like a lot of us would like it to.

On the EVE 2 front, EVE is old as sh*t. You can frame it how you want, but the game is old. Not a bad thing for EVE itself, it seems to still be going strong enough, and obviously a good amount of people still generally enjoy it, but (I cherry picked a couple lines from your post, kinda cheating I know lol)-

Alena Asakura wrote:

but the existing players of EvE NEVER want a new concept. They basicly want whatever they have at any given time to just stay that way.

That would require new functionality in EvE that the EXISTING EvE community has already said it doesn't want. Any new EvE2 product would have to first and foremost satisfy the existing EvE community because that's how it is with EvE. You're not talking about a GAME, you're talking about a CULTURE. You can't change a culture by just rolling out a new version of a game.

Look I don't know nearly enough about EVE to comment on what all they could do different for an EVE 2. And that's honestly a bad title, because of this very part of our conversation. But I do agree EVE is very particular about what they want, and I do agree the culture holds total sway, and that's fine. But you can't tell me that this style, this genre of game has reached its pinacle, aside from some updates from time to time.

While I understand EVE may still innovative within Tranquility itself, I think it is silly to say there is no innovation to be had outside of Tranquility. And to do that you can't be thinking about changing a culture, you have to be thinking about creating a new one just as i would think Nova intends to do.

I always end up back on the same question. "Does CCP know what kind of game they are making, and who they are making it for?" EVE targets a very specific gamer, one that has partially proven in some ways uninterested in an FPS. I doubt simply putting an FPS on PC will sway the cornerstones of the EVE community. And if you aren't targeting EVE, who are you targeting? They would be entering a competitive section of gaming, saying "we have a small, generic shooter, we (as of this moment) have jettisoned literally everything that made said games spiritual predecessor unique, and we are utterly devoted to our original IP, EVE, at any and every cost".

I just wonder why. If you don't intend to tie a shooter to Tranquility, don't make the shooter, stick with EVE. If you want to tie a shooter into a Tranquility type setting, start from scratch on both sides. I'm fine with an "EVE2" having to be a new concept, I see no reason to avoid creating a new community, just as I would see no reason to tie a shooter made in say 2020 to a space simple game made in, what, 2003?

On the port front, I'm far from knowledgeable in game development and software and coding and all that. I would imagine the chance for Nova to grow into something larger than could be ported is there isn't it? I'm not against a port, but while there is no certainty they ever will port, I would think there is also no certainty they would be able to port if Nova ever came together like a lot of us would like it to.

No, not really. There's no point in building a game that will only run on top-flight systems. Noone will be able to run it so noone will buy it. They have to develop to what the industry considers reasonable "games machines", which will definitely have more in the way of graphics and perhaps processor and memory than a "productivity" (office) machine.

In other words, no matter what they produce, they have to put into the product enough tweaks to let people run it on a machine that maybe isn't what the developers intended. That could have a negative effect on the playing community, so developers have to keep their code under some reasonable sort of control. There will always be some who won't compromise, and there will always be those who build machines (not buy them!) to run these games and more, but the majority won't go out and build a new machine for each new game that maxes out their old one.

Consoles represent a standardised set of resources for running games, appropriate to the era they are produced for. So it's fairly easy to develop on PC (a common platform) with appropriate controls for resource usage, to make a game fit more or less on a standard games PC or a reasonably current console. Generally speaking most modern consoles have more of the resources that makes for "games machines" than most PCs. EvE will run rather well with scaled down everything, on a fairly lack-lustre PC. I can't see any reason that games developed for PCs would be necessarily better than games that were developed for consoles.

Look I don't know nearly enough about EVE to comment on what all they could do different for an EVE 2. And that's honestly a bad title, because of this very part of our conversation. But I do agree EVE is very particular about what they want, and I do agree the culture holds total sway, and that's fine. But you can't tell me that this style, this genre of game has reached its pinacle, aside from some updates from time to time.

While I understand EVE may still innovative within Tranquility itself, I think it is silly to say there is no innovation to be had outside of Tranquility. And to do that you can't be thinking about changing a culture, you have to be thinking about creating a new one just as i would think Nova intends to do.

I always end up back on the same question. "Does CCP know what kind of game they are making, and who they are making it for?" EVE targets a very specific gamer, one that has partially proven in some ways uninterested in an FPS. I doubt simply putting an FPS on PC will sway the cornerstones of the EVE community. And if you aren't targeting EVE, who are you targeting? They would be entering a competitive section of gaming, saying "we have a small, generic shooter, we (as of this moment) have jettisoned literally everything that made said games spiritual predecessor unique, and we are utterly devoted to our original IP, EVE, at any and every cost".

I just wonder why. If you don't intend to tie a shooter to Tranquility, don't make the shooter, stick with EVE. If you want to tie a shooter into a Tranquility type setting, start from scratch on both sides. I'm fine with an "EVE2" having to be a new concept, I see no reason to avoid creating a new community, just as I would see no reason to tie a shooter made in say 2020 to a space simple game made in, what, 2003?

My point is that EvE2 would be superfluous. We already have EvE2 - the current EvE is in fact EvEX (pick a number). It's continuously developing. Yes, of late, the development has probably slowed due to crises like Incarna, and the new obsession with VR, but if they wanted to, they could make EvE as advanced as they want. The point is, they don't want to. It's already as advanced as they want, and if they want it improved, they can just do it via the current mechanisms.

Your other reason for producing an EvE2 is so they can integrate a Dust/Nova FPS into it. They can already do that too. They were going to do that with Dust, and it was the EvE community that crushed that. Walking in Stations was to be the first move towards a fully integrated mobile-avatar tactile environment within EvE that would interface with the same sort of thing in Dust. There was no reason that could not have occurred then or even now. It would not take a rewrite of EvE to do it, just additional modules which would interface with EvE while utilising the same database (Tranquility).

The issue, as with Dust, is going to be the acceptance of it by the EvE community. If CCP can get around that, the job will be so much easier. I have a suspicion, though, that at least one of the reasons they are going so heavily into VR is that they want to move away from EvE and the hornet's nest they disturb anytime they want to change things. Nova may or may not be seen by the EvE community as having anything to do with EvE. I suspect if they think that Nova is changing EvE in any way, they won't like that.

You seem to acknowledge that the EvE community at least is partially responsible for this issue, and that perhaps an EvE2 might get around that. But EvE2 still has to be populated by the Denizens of New Eden, namely the current population of EvE, so we don't really get away from that community. From a development perspective, leaving EvE in place and integrating new modules into it is far more reasonable than rewriting it.

Edit:

I agree, if they don't intend to tie a shooter into EvE they should just stick with EvE and forget the shooter. I can't see a point in producing a shooter in the New Eden universe that doesn't tie to EvE.

Development will be easier on PC, the bureaucratic nature of the project will be less complex and more money can be spent on the game directly rather than in coordinating with Sony.

Although, they will most likely pull less customers on PC since it is harder to attract a large dedicated crowd on PC since the FPS market is already extremely saturated. And unlike consoles where games die off pretty quickly and the community moves on the PC crowd has a way of keeping games half dead. So the community would most likely keep the game relevant but whether it would actually attract sufficient people from Planetside, Battlefield and Battlefront is dubious. Honestly, since the head developer for Nova has categorized himself as a realist and the game as pragmatic I would say that the game is probably going to be much more generic in general. From a business perspective this bodes well since it can guarantee income for at least a time.

So is PC a good idea? Yes it is if they want to go with safe income. Though console would be better if they are willing to wager on getting a larger return. It seems CCP is done wagering on consoles. They got cooked on their last bet and they aren't willing to bet again so soon.

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